


press harder on this bruise (i'll be happy)

by Coquette



Series: Guns and Drink: Rain or Shine [1]
Category: 91 Days (Anime)
Genre: Angelo is a silent stalker, Eventual Fluff, Hurt, M/M, Nero is really fond of him, au set in a universe where Angelo came back earlier and became Nero's um, left hand man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 01:25:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8081293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coquette/pseuds/Coquette
Summary: Nero tells Angelo something he thinks might help him get over his morality (which Nero doesn't know is totally non-existent). Because Nero really likes Angelo (but Angelo really doesn't. Though apparently sleeping with him is still another matter entirely.)Two idiots fall into insanity somewhere along the way. Or love. It's the same, all things considered.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Here, Angelo's been with the Vanetti for more than a year and has quickly gained Nero's favor. He's slowly killing off Nero's cadre of men (random ocs loyal to Nero) and personally offed Volpe and Vanno. Now all that's left is the Don, his sons, and their personal underlings. My canon is that he hired himself out to them as a small time street thief but worked his way up the ranks because of his borderline daredevil antics anytime Nero was concerned (because he wants to be the one to kill Nero and because Nero is to trouble like honey is to flies.)
> 
> Probably going to be a drabble type series thing.
> 
> Also, CORTEO WHY?

Luce’s been gone a long time now.

 

Angelo’s afraid he’s forgetting. Forgetting the important things like the light in his eyes, the curl of his little delighted smile. He can’t remember which way his brother parted his hair or what movies he used to watch. He can’t even remember the feel of his brother’s hug.

 

The one thing that has remained with him throughout the years is the sight of Luce lying cold and still, wrapped in his mother’s arms with blood in an ever expanding pool around them. His blond hair limp and tangled, a dark clotting stain of red dyed on the back of his shirt. His little brother who he’d failed by the tips of his worthless fingers.

 

Angelo lights a cigarette with a steady hand. He drags, long and deep and exhales up into the cold air. He blinks as a tiny ethereal white flake lands flush upon his eye.

 

“Bad weather this,” grumbles the other sentry on duty with him, kicking at a heavy pile of snow. He squats and rubs his hands together. “Bet those assholes insides are all toasty warm. What I’d give to put a couple’uns down and stick it good to some bim after.” He grunts and spits off to the side, a surly expression fixed upon his face.

 

Angelo spares him a short glance. Jim- or Jack or whatever his is - seems pretty pissed. Guard duty works on rotation, no outs. That’s why Angelo himself is out here despite everyone knowing he’s as good as been taken under Nero’s hand. Everyone gets their turn and really it's only their combined bad luck they drew the short straw out here tonight. He’d think Barberos, Nero’s real right hand had it in for him with this if he hadn’t already known for sure.

 

Angelo hums a noncommittal reply and shoulders off the wall. “I’ll run the perimeter,” he says idly, fingering his trigger. He slouches off into the snow, waving a hand over his shoulder. He’s not in the mood for small talk. It’s a bad night today especially with Luce’s ghost insistent on following at his heels.

 

He feels phantom hands on his neck as the snowflakes melt and run under his thick fleece. Angelo determinedly trudges onward, keeping an eye out over the barbed wire than runs along the top of the walls. “ _Brother_ ,” Luce whispers. “ _How much longer._ ”

 

Angelo shivers. His knuckles whiten around the handle of his gun. He does not reply to the words puffed so silently into his ear.

 

It’s been a year and some two months since he joined up with the Vanetti family, and a little more than seven years since the day the Vanetti sent droppers to cut down his parents and became responsible for their murders and that of Angelo’s little brother. His revenge has been been a long time in the making but soon, soon. He’s already taken care of most of Nero's men insidiously, in the dark of the night, sending some to watery graves, others to rot deep in the ground. Vanno and that other idiot Volpe, so extremely loyal to Nero he'd taken care of personally. Now left is only the main triad -Nero, his brother Frate, and their father, Don Vanetti- and the administration.

 

He closes his eyes, imagines pushing Nero to his knees, seeing the blazing glint in those angry eyes as he spits curses at him, imagines pushing the gun to a bound up Frate’s head, and whispering , ‘watch, Nero, watch your little brother, and you’re so close but there’s nothing you can do is there? You feel that? That’s a pain that will never go away.’

 

He blinks away the images and tucks his head deeper into his scarf. He’ll let Nero live, he thinks viciously, so he can understand completely how Angelo feels and when the knowledge leaves him impotent and raging brokenly, that’s when Angelo Lagusa will deal the final blow.

 

About halfway around the meandering circle of the Vanetti mansion’s grounds, he spies a light. His eyebrows furrow and he darts behind a tree before peering out.

 

The light flickers and then another flares into being, a small hot flare of orange-red. A cigarette, he thinks. Still tense, Angelo moves, silent and deadly toward the source.

 

The click of a lighter closing and then-

 

-”Avilio,” comes the assured, confident voice of Nero. “Come out.”

 

Mouth flattening into a thin line, Angelo steps out. “You knew?”

 

Nero walks toward him, cigarette hanging at a jaunty angle from his mouth. “Sure I did,” he says, jovial. “It’s only you who could give me the creeps but not give yourself away.”

 

Angelo looks away sharply, jaw tautening. 

 

A hand drops down onto his shoulder. Nero regards him with some concern, and an equal amount of wariness. “What’s the matter, Avilio?”

 

Nero's been irritating lately, asking invasive questions, always wanting to know how Angelo feels- even the afterglow of sex is spoiled by Nero turning over and looking at him with those knowing blue eyes, steadily waiting for Angelo to break. And yes, he's sleeping with Nero. It's more a matter of convenience than anything else, after all the time they spent on the road together and all the whores  easily bribed to kill them for a couple bucks once they went steady. Safer keeping it between _compares_. You couldn't really rely on a relationship lasting in the mafia anyway. Besides Nero had apparently always favored men and Angelo, well, he'd already sacrificed so much, this would be a pleasure when it cropped.

 

Angelo jerks around, removing the hand in the process. “Shouldn’t you be inside?” He asks finally, nodding his head at the many twinkling lights in the distance. “It’s cold as a witch’s tit out here.”

 

Nero hums but tactfully accepts the deflection for what it is. “Couldn’t breath in there,” he says ruefully. “All those new recruits Barberos brings in keep mucking things up. Jus’ thought I’d come out here to light one up. Got some things to think about, anyway.”

 

“Like?”

 

Nero laughs heartily, scrubs a hand through his beard. “You’re one inquisitive fellow, aintcha? Wassat about not poking your button into someone’s business your mama never taught you?”

 

“She’s dead,” Angelo bites out, hissing catlike.

 

“Huh?” Nero has the gall to look surprised. Then, the light of recognition flickers across his face. Angelo had come to the Vanetti family as a scrapper, a street-kid, someone who knew to pick-pockets and bump off an unwanted nuisance. You didn’t get that good at blending in unless you were alone in the first place.

 

“Right,” Nero murmurs eventually, eyes shifting.

 

Angelo shrugs, the blind fury in him making him blink hard, keeping his hand tight on his trigger -just one shot was all he- but he turns away, ready to go back to his vigil, to Luce’s cold reaching fingers. It’s not time for this. Not yet. Not till he has everyone who was present _that night_ accounted for. Nero stops him cold though.

 

“Seven years.”

 

Angelo stops short. He dreads it, the sentence that will follow but he knows with sure certainty that it’s coming. Nero’s going to chance something between them now, he’s going to change the game Angelo’s set up just right. Going to toss all the pieces right to the floor and grin that insouciant grin of his, insufferable as ever.

 

“Seven years ago,” Nero says somewhere behind him to his left. “was the first time I killed somebody’s mother.”

 

Angelo pivots on one foot. They’re staring at each other now, silent, calculating. Nero, defiant, proud, his posture suggesting he’s nothing but immune to any judgment Avilio might pass. And Angelo, why, Angelo wants to leap the skinny distance between them and wring that neck so hard Nero’s eyes bulge and his tongue protrudes and his head falls off.

 

“ _Brother_ ,” says Luce plaintively, hand tugging at his wrist. “ _Brother, is it not done yet?_ ”

 

The moment passes and Nero takes a drag of his cigar, stuffs a hand in his suit pocket. “Well, I let her be killed, rather.” He ashes it, puts it back in his mouth. “A real shame.”

 

“Who was she?” Angelo marvels at how steady and calm his voice comes out.

 

Nero sighs. “The wife of our records keeper, Testa Lagusa. I didn’t take the shot, but. My dad killed her an’ her husband and kid right in front of me.” 

 

Angelo grips his gun tight. _Luce_ , he thinks. _Mama. Papa. This man meant to kill you._

 

Nero goes on talking. “Lagusa was dirty. We got him for passing on funds and dad meant to make an example out of him. The wife had to go too. And kids, Christ, she had two of them I think. One got away-”

 

- _oh but he’s standing right in front of you_ , Angelo thinks vindictively-

 

  
-”but her and the other, well, I was a coward. I didn’t shoot anyone that night. I think sometimes, that’s why the Don was disappointed by me. After that I threw myself into the family business, learnt our line of work inside and out. I stole, ruined, bombed, jacked, and did a lot of bad shit.” Nero’s voice goes soft. “All I wanted was for Dad to look at me. For him to really see me. Be proud.” He raises his eyes and fixes them squarely on Angelo. “I’ve killed for that. You see, Avilio, there’s nothing special about any of us. We’re all fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. We all have someone who’d mourn us if we kicked it. That don’t mean any of us deserve to live more than the other. And when we do get given the boot, doesn’t matter if its fair or not, if you can just keep your little bit of happiness, your family safe, then you kill as many as you need to before you kick the bucket, got that?”   


 

Angelo closes his eyes at the spike of pain Nero’s words, however well meant, drive through his heart. You took mine away from me, he doesn’t say. To protect yours, you took my family from me but now oh who’ll protect you as I take yours away, Nero Vanetti?

 

  
He looks across the clearing at Nero, the Don-in-waiting for the Vanetti family, the son of the man who orchestrated the murder of Angelo’s little brother, his mama, his papa. Nero, who was there and watched as  little Luce was shot, who must have seen Angelo, barely eleven with a face full of tears fleeing into the woods barefoot and bedraggled on a cold snowy night like this, Nero who doesn’t know that the man standing opposite him whom he calls Avilio, brother, friend, lover, whom he took to bed so tenderly just last night, is the little boy who escaped certain death seven years ago, who has come to exact his vengeance for the deaths of the ones he loved.   


 

Nero smirks, the maddening light back in his eyes. 

 

Angelo thinks of how Nero must have felt all those years ago in his teens, born into a family steeped in crime with no other alternative in the small but violent town of Lawless. A child with the heavy weight of his father’s expectations, a young boy expected to pull the trigger on a mother and child. A boy who couldn’t and who suffered for it, who changed, who could kill now without batting an eyelid, a boy a lot like Angelo is now, a man whose tenets Angelo can respect.

 

You kill as many as you need to, right?

 

He takes a couple steps, leans into Nero. He smells of whiskey and smoke. Expensive aftershave. Angelo cants his head up to meets Nero's gaze.

 

“Soon,” Angelo whispers, turning his face into Luce’s cold caress, eyes not leaving Nero. “Soon, _Dolce_ , it will be over for us.” Luce's eyes bore into his head, the old nickname used after seven years. A cold fire lights in his bones.

 

Nero bends his head and brushes his mouth over Angelo's thin cheek, carefully pulling his scarf aside. "Then we'll take as many down with us as we can." Nero's talking about the fight with the Orco's and the Galassia's, the unenviable position the Vanetti have been pushed into. It had happened with more than a little help from Angelo.

 

Angelo smiles, tilts his head to the side. 

 

Oh yes, he'll take as many down with him as he can.

 

"It's a promise," he breathes. Nero will stand against the burning backdrop of his mansion with his family dead inside and Angelo-

 

Angelo will laugh.

 


End file.
